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> The American appetite for a low skill manufacturing job is dead - I'm not sure it's a bad thing either.

It probably isn't a bad thing, as long as we continue to invest in automation and high-skill manufacturing. The Economist wrote about this recently: the fantasy of "low-skill factory jobs for all" is just that, a fantasy: https://archive.is/YoMs1

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Fascinating article.

They have toyed around with automation but the capital required to retrofit for such a small business would be intensive but is coming down.

Interestingly the automation pieces that they have been testing (multi-axis robot arms) have only became cost effective since the Chinese robots entered the market. The Chinese have completely dropped the floor on automation tooling.

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